A few strands of evidence

As you may know, the state GOP convention is going on this weekend in San Antonio. If you can get past all the immigrant-bashing, there are a couple of clues about the the state of the state Republican Party and the relationship between Governor Perry and his base.

Item One: An attempt to add a plank to the party platform calling for the repeal of the new business tax failed miserably.

Houston businessman Norman Adams led the fight in the temporary platform committee but was overwhelmingly voted down. Adams said he will either try to bring the plank to the convention as a platform committee minority report or as a floor amendment to the platform on Saturday.

“A number of delegates felt the same pressure the majority of the Legislature felt – they were afraid to offend the governor,” Adams said.

Platform Committee Chairman Kirk Overbey said Adams got only three of the 31 temporary platform committee members to vote for his measure. He said Adams is unlikely to get a minority report out of committee or support for the measure on the convention floor.

“This is an attempt by a disgruntled small group to embarrass the governor,” Overbey said.

Overbey said the convetion is not going to turn away from Perry, who may be “the most conservative” governor the state has had. He said Perry has been in line with convention delegates on numerous issues, ranging from restrictions on abortion to banning gay marriage.

“There’s a loyalty there,” Overbey said.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: The reason I have a hard time believing the likes of Steven Hotze on this is precisely because Perry has given the base what it really wants – more restrictions on abortion, the Double Secret Illegal Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment, and now red meat on immigration. No other candidate does all that, and Rick Perry knows it.

The Strayhorn swipe: “Texans aren’t looking for an act … they are looking for action. And it is hard to take action when you don’t know what you believe. Anyone who is willing to change positions on abortion, school choice and their own pay raise cannot be trusted with your future.”

A guess: The Strayhorn references were to what Perry’s camp perceives as Strayhorn’s drift on the abortion issue, her declaration reversing her previous support of state-funded vouchers for students to attend private school and her handling of a legislatively approved pay raise.

Hotze and his sycophants may very well continue to make noise about this, and I will continue to doubt that it will amount to very much. And believe me when I say how fervently I wish I turn out to be wrong about this.

Item Two: Presumptive State Senator and now two-city radio mogul Dan Patrick was rebuffed in his attempt to address the conventioneers about his grievances over the business tax.

Conservative radio talk show host Dan Patrick of Houston wanted to address the convention and talk about the tax. Patrick figures he should be entitled to a few minutes considering that he racked up a whopping 69 percent of the GOP primary vote for an open state Senate seat.

“There should be some debate. I think it’s very healthy to talk about issues, where there’s strong disagreement and there’s strong disagreement over the direction of the party,” he says.

Some party conservatives want more focus on reducing government spending and lower caps for property appraisal increases (now set at 10 percent), Patrick says. And some conservatives believe party leaders made a mistake by supporting a new business tax when the state has an $8.2 billion surplus.

“None of those three are being talked about, and if you bury your head in the sand and don’t address the issues that people are concerned about – who are the core of the party – I think that’s a huge mistake,” Patrick says.

[…]

Patrick asked GOP state chairwoman Tina Benkiser for time to address the convention.

She rejected the request.

He’s simply a candidate, she says. There are two U.S. senators, 21 congressional members, 19 state senators, 87 state House members and more than 25 statewide elected GOP officials.

“And they don’t get time to speak (to the convention),” Benkiser says.

There’s 86 GOP State House members after Democrat Donna Howard’s win in the HD48 special election this past February, but that’s not important right now. What would be interesting to know is how many of these people asked for a speaking slot similar to what Patrick asked for. Maybe they know better than to ask, or maybe that’s a smokescreen.

Be that as it may, Patrick is generally right about the need to discuss differences rather than bury them, though it’s not clear what value there’d be in having such a potentially divisive speech in public. I’d sure like to know what kind of response Patrick would have gotten, much as I’m sure Tina Benkiser would prefer not to know. It’s certainly easy to see why she did what she did.

Mark Lee Roy H. Petersen as the lone protester outside the GOP state convention, stationed on the sidewalk outside the convention center. The Grimes County delegate, wearing a Longhorns cap, is toting two signs urging folks to reject Republican Gov. Rick Perry.

Petersen, 69, charges Perry with keeping secret state plans to place toll roads around Texas. And he objects to the business tax Perry just signed into law, favoring sales taxes instead.

Republican leaders “are feeding us a bunch of lies in order to get votes,” he said today as delegates streamed past him. Few looked up.

He’s likely to remain a solo practitioner. Not much to see here, so let’s move on to Item Four: Where was George?

George W. Bush as governor and president has been a darling of the Texas Republican Convention since 1994, but not this year because of his handling of illegal immigration.

Gov. Rick Perry in his convention speech mentioned Presidents Abraham Lincoln once and Ronald Reagan four times. He never mentioned Bush by name, and his only reference to “the president” was somewhat negative.

“Texas is not waiting on Washington to act,” Perry said. “Six months before the president anounced National Guard soldiers would help secure the border, Texas had already made that decision.

This brings us back to Item One. Rick Perry has always been good at steering the conversation where he wants it to go. Using the red-meat immigration issue as a way to distance himself from President Bush and his crappy approval ratings is a nice piece of maneuvering and blame-shifting. You have to hand it to the guy – he knows where his bread is buttered, and he never loses sight of that.

What all of this suggests to me is that while Rick Perry has lost support at the margins, the base hasn’t abandoned him as it is starting to do to Bush, both here and nationally. If that’s all he’s got, he’s still vulnerable in November, since it appears we’re talking about 35 to 40 percent of the voter pool, and that’s low enough to give Chris Bell a chance if Democrats vote Democratic. Even if he survives, he may find himself in a much weaker position with the Legislature, where a number of Republican incumbents and open seats are also threatened by the same loss of support among non-hardcore but still-reliable Republican voters. I still don’t see any convincing evidence yet that the base is crumbling underneath him. Alas.

Even Norman Adams, a GOP activist from Houston who wants the party platform to include language condemning the new business tax, said, “I don’t want anybody but Perry being re-elected. But I want to scare the pants off of him.”

Further evidence that this is much ado about nothing. Thanks to Eye on Williamson for the catch.

Similarly, when I read Elam’s liveblogging of the convention, it doesn’t quite square with your “immigrant-bashing” characterization of the convention. But who knows, maybe he just missed it going on all around him while he was liveblogging. *shrug*